The new volume houses the dining area, which includes stairs to the bedrooms. The table is from Blake Avenue and the walnut chairs are from Room & Board. “You don’t want bright colors to take away from that relationship between the interior and the exterior,” Walker says.

The subway tile-lined bathroom was kept as simple as possible, with Hansgrohe fixtures and cabinets made of vertical-grain Douglas fir above a top-mounted Duravit sink. Since installing a window was unfeasible given the bathroom's proximity to other properties, Storey added a skylight over the shower.

“Before, the house turned its back on the landscape,” said Parish. “This renovation and addition really animates the garden.” Sliding glass doors match those of the living room beyond the deck, and both can be completely open to the yard.

The resident, a Tokyo transplant, commissioned architect Tadashi Murai to create a fully-equipped structure that comes with its own power, heating and cooling, water, and waste-disposal systems.

Conceived as a glass wall or window that could swing open rather than a typical door, the resulting glass-and-metal piece is so heavy that it required its own foundation! Thanks to clever engineering by Sand Studios, even seven-year-old Macy can operate the 2,000-pound door.

With his son, William, watching, architect Noah Walker tries out the floor-to-ceiling Schüco glass doors he integrated into a guesthouse he designed off an existing barn for Nathan Frankel, an amateur violinist, in Beverly Hills, California. The new portion features an open living-dining area. See more glass houses we love!

Architect Bruce Bolander made the most of a limited footprint in a house he designed in a Malibu canyon. With the small bedroom unable to accommodate any "normal" size desk, the architect designed a very thin custom steel desk where resident Heidi Wright works. The floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors from Metal Window Corporation open the entire corner of the room up to the outdoors. “The mountains across the way are almost like another wall—they contain the space to the point that you feel like you’re in a much bigger space, that you’re part of the overall landscape,” says Bolander. Photo by J Bennett Fitts.

"I put everything that I've always loved into this house," says Tyler—and that includes white tiles edged with gray grout in the bathroom, a design move previous clients had balked at.

The top floor of the two-story, 1,614-square-foot abode barely pokes above the rocky hillside it’s built into. Sliding glass walls on two sides of the main living space open to expansive cantilevered decks showcasing the bucolic landscape.

A custom-tailored mechanism allows six floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors to open along the entire width of the living space, creating a seamless transition from indoors to out.

The modestly scaled master bedroom opens to a view of the woods located behind the property.

800 Series glass-door refrigerator by Bosch, $2,500 Bosch’s 24-inch-wide entry into the compact category comes in tempered white glass (pictured), black glass, and stainless-steel finishes with hidden hinges and a handle-less design.

The house is located on a 25-acre site. It sat unsold on the property for two years before the couple discovered it.

“People should choose objects for their home with passion, love, and emotion. You must give your interior some time to grow with your experiences. Let it be a combination of important discoveries from your own life.” —Resident Veerle Wenes

The home’s previous owner’s father was one of the first wine importers to Denmark, and the cellar still contains some of his bottles, first placed there 40 years ago and now dusty, with obscured labels and decaying corks. The couple opens one once in a while—"they’re usually very bad, but sometimes very good," says Østergaard.

Davor and August check out the yard from the living room. “The bifold Vistalite doors allow us to open the house up completely and enjoy the fresh, warm air,” Davor says.

The front door dissolves into the facade.

Gray-purple iron railings, a fuchsia and green wooden entry, and garage doors provide contrast to the white walls of this Santa Barbara home. Photo by Steven Holmes.

The wood stove is the Rondo model by Rais.

“Creating efficient space is valuable, but for us, rooms that offer visual and spatial continuity with nature are also important,” architect Julie Dowling explains. “When the sliding doors are open, the living room and kitchen double in size.”

Van Beek’s extra space is home to her office. She works on a Tense table by Piergiorgio and Michele Cazzaniga and Flow chairs by Jean Marie Massaud, both for MDF Italia.

The rear facade. A system of sliding glass windows and doors underscore the indoor/outdoor nature of the house.

Sometimes, it's the details—like new door knobs and hinges—that matter. Small T-shaped brushed nickel pulls are a modern choice in this kitchen with light wood cabinets and invisible hinges.

Wenes chose to keep the original brick floors to tie the older building to its past.

He worked around existing oak and eucalyptus trees for the new building, and retained the vernacular of an original barn, at right, where Frankel hosts concerts. Check out MVRDV's Balancing Barn.

Located in Aarhus, Denmark, Villa R is a minimalist, serene structure clad in zinc panels. "The objective was to create a house that brings the forest inside through large glass panels—and create an ever-changing seasonal backdrop for the interior living spaces," stated the architecture firm, C.F. Møller, of the 3,200-square-foot abode.

Thanks to floor-to-ceiling glass, the home feels like it's part of the landscape.

The house has four varieties of wood that relate to one another with a similar material vocabulary. “It is all about finding ways to assemble pieces of the same nature,” says Lamine.

The Parisian flat that American-born architect Michael Herrman shares with his wife, Cécile, and their 2-year-old daughter, Rose, had been nearly untouched since the 1790s, when it was built. “But I wanted to try and reveal some of its age in a fresh new context,” Herrman said.

A continuous concrete slab runs from inside the house out to the open deck, which is exposed to the wind that sweeps the surrounding fields.

The house captures meadow views, thanks to three large sliding doors by Loewen that lead out to a big deck. “We wanted to hide the view from visitors until you get inside, so it would feel like a surprise when walking in,” Bronee says. “This also gives us the sense of being tucked in and cozy in the winter with a view of the meadow, and in the summer it feels like indoors and outdoors are connected. We live just as much on the deck as we do inside.”

The ultimate luxury: a hot bath in the clawfoot tub, with the fiberglass door open wide to the woods.

A 22-foot sliding-glass door by Fleetwood opens onto an ipe deck furnished with lounge chairs, a cocktail table, and stools from Room & Board’s Penelope line. The bar is made of concrete and Richlite, a wood-fiber composite used in skateboard ramps.

As the house is situated on a steep slope, visitors enter only to be whisked upstairs to the main living space. The facade was designed by Bob Hatfield in 1996. A new glass and steel door, designed by Chris Deam and fabricated by Sand Studios, was added in the renovation.